Alex United coach spring-cleans the house

Tracy-Lee Pepper had to wield the axe in her efforts to overhaul her squad as part of bringing discipline and cohesion to what had been a wayward team in the past season.

The Alex United mentor spring cleaned the house and disposed of all the players she had inherited from the previous team coach, Madida Letele, who has since returned to the team as Pepper’s assistant.

Besides the ill-discipline in the previous squad, Pepper said she needed to trim down the squad to manageable levels and, as a result, she had to rid herself of excess fat, leaving only three out of more than 30 players from the previous squad.

Those who remained include current captain and artistic midfielder-cum-striker Collen Zimba; Pepper’s son, Smith and colourful Vusi Mahlangu.

“I had to trim the excess fat as I needed a small squad that is easy to manage. I told [club director] Nick [Nicolaou] that if he wants me to mould a winning squad and take the team to another level, he must let me choose my own players.

“I needed players that were disciplined, players that will show up for training, and players that will not run up to Nick like little babies each time there was a tiff between them and coach,” Pepper said.

So, Pepper then fired the whole squad with the exception of Zimba, Smith and Mahlangu. “If there was another player I would have loved to keep, it was Chicho Mabeba, but he wanted to return to his former club, Highlands Park.”

Asked about one of the most talented midfielders Alex has produced, Katlego ‘Skates’ Mbatha, Pepper said she was often asked why she never plays Skates. “How can I play a player that never shows up in training?” she asked.

“Putting his talents aside, Skates was so ill-disciplined that it was a nightmare working with him. I did not know what to do with Skates because I could not risk [working with] a player [of whom] I do not know [what to expect] as he never trains with us,” Pepper said.

To put the ill-discipline within the previous squad into perspective, Pepper said there were cliques among the players themselves, and some players would refuse to sit with some of their teammates for the simple reason they were not in their good books.

“That, alone, made managing them a nightmare and in order to start afresh, I needed to spring clean the whole house and bring new blood into the team to produce a winning unit and at the same time keep the cohesion,” she said.